The Lair

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup

Best Beer Names Ever → Or maybe just in the US #
more from the anonymous internet hate machine → I just love this. I really really do. #
CSS minifier → been intending a peek at these toys at some point #
whee. The big guns join the OpenID alliance → both provider and consumer service provisioning, please! #
Vertical branding taken to extremes – an encryption tool for err.. the mujahideen → with the marketing reading something like – “use the tool approved by the terrorist overlords to encrypt all your messages!” #
this is relevant to my interests → I swear. 20 odd years of school and I still can’t tie my laces properly. Sometime ago, I just stopped caring. #
Limericks, now in a convenient database form → uses the same software as the famous bash.org, I believe. #
Discover which candidate you would support in the US elections → if you were like … able to vote or even cared to do so. #
A Post-IntelliJ world → Yeah, but you know.. that was version 2.5 or 3.0. Everything after 4.0 has been on a downward spiral #
Victim of His Own Success: The Tragedy of Bobby Fischer → A balanced look at one of the game’s greats #
Raising the Steak → Kobe Beef : the myth and apparent reality #
five new yorkers who face extreme stress → 11th grade student? Oh please. #
prove that you are indeed a leet gamer when playing online → or not. #
everyone say it with me → scam scam scammity scam #
Top 50 British writers since 1945 → I’ve read maybe half of these people. And I already have nitpicks about the list. #
The Smart Set: Scent of a Führer → Yet more proof that vegetarians are the cause of most of the world’s problems. And you know who else was a vegetarian? yes, that’s right. #
everyone needs a bit moar lolcat in their websiet → It’s been done for lots of other pidgin languages, but it’s still funny in lolcat #
Life as a series of receipt stubs → Awesome #
Coffee Drinks Illustrated → Because pretty pictures are better than wondering why your coffee is that muddy colour #
Won’t someone please think of Vietnam? → I laughed when I heard the comparison being made. This article explains why. #
Unintentionally Sexual Comics Covers/Panels → Comics and innuendo. Old skool scans. #
MoanMyIP.com – yes, what it says → NSFW and don’t listen with the speakers turned up. You have been warned #
People aren’t what they seem over IM → News (and several films) at 11 #
A Soviet Poster A Day → Just what it says on the tin. A new Soviet era propaganda poster every day. #
Vanilla (the nifty forum software) embeds sponsored links in the product → inevitable, I suppose. Everyone needs to make some cash for their hard work. This is rather sad though. #
LOL Feeds → make a lolcat for each of the titles on your blog, twitter, jaiku or wherever #
The Chicken Fried Pork Belly Caesar → dammit. feel hungry now. #
Spite is apparently not a chimpanzee emotion → chimps are however, susceptible to vengeful behaviour #
In a blindingly obvious result: Ruby is faster to setup; but not yet as scalable as Java → The same team are expected to proclaim their findings on the colour of the daytime sky shortly #
Making Bacon → is there anything it can’t do? from an anonymous tipster #
Stephen King reviews Harry Potter → Not a huge fan of King’s recent work, but I think this review is awesome on many different levels. #
Eating meat as a dating strategy → why ordering meat can make someone seem down to earth and less finicky. Amen. #
The vast majority of people are unwilling to take another human life → fascinating read about how this reluctance is overcome #
Schneier interviews the chief of the TSA → lots of fascinating insight on airport security in the US #
Ransomizr – a Flickr ransom note generator → Generates old skool ransom notes from random Flick pics. Very cool. #
sickening, isn’t it? → cheese pie that doesn’t taste quite as good the second time. #
Microsoft Project now has an open-source competitor → imaginatively named OpenProj. Supposedly cross-platform. Looks nifty #
walking causes more damage to the environment than driving → so.very.confused now #
All men are liars, apparently → A fascinating read, if for no other reason than that my perspective is so different from his. #
237 reasons to have sex → some people take their research very seriously #
On a Ramen theme → I may have mentioned Ramen before – but this looks tasty. #
inverse relationship between grades and sex drive posited → what if you’re really smart about getting laid? Ah. Paradoxes. #
A-List Bloggers: It’s a fad. Everyone go home now. → Well I’ll be. They’re not tech gods? #
it’s apparently national orgasm week. This week. → One week a year just isn’t that great, is it? #
Scarlett Johansson will play Jenna Jameson → zomg bewbies #
The Kremlin is like something conceived by Mario Puzo → Kasparov on Putin and politics in Russia today #
being aggressive leads to higher pay. Umm. duh. → But then the article had to go and bring gender into it. #
from flirting to fornication → like this is a bad thing… Granuiad writer sounds like nose is distinctly out of joint here. #
childrens books are banned from the NYT bestseller lists → err. right. Not that I use the NYT bestseller list for my reading decisions, but ok. #
eating beef is less green than driving → that’s too bad for the planet then. I’m probably close to being classed as a militant carnivore. #
Collaborative filtering for news sources → this is an idea that sounds like it should work in practice – but one man’s news is another man’s propaganda. I expect it to be gamed viciously if it ever becomes popular. #
a new superhero for this day and age – splogfighter → the database of 13m blogs sounds rather creepy though #
PHP4 will not be supported after this year → end of an era? I just hope everyone upgrades. #
let loose the badgers of war, they said. → may I be only about the millionth person to chant “badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom”. #
joke comprehension may decrease with age → laugh it up, junior. laugh it up. #
smacks ever so slightly of elitism, but there is a lot to agree with in this review → jumped the shark. Over. I still watch the Simpsons though. #
rent a house and get richer → skippy pointed me to this a while ago. It flies in the face of everything I thought made fiscal sense. So. Confused. #
is anything safe to eat anymore? → can’t help but feel slightly aggrieved at this. #
how to retain people → lots of interesting stuff there #
Time notices 37Signals → ultimately not a great deal of new insight, though #
not sure this article is enough to reform GWB in the public eye but … → the human touches were very nicely done. #
blog and social network by proxy → ghostwriter? Who’s that? oh, but this is Facebook. It’s different. #
fried chicken → it’s the spice mix that counts #
why poor countries remain poor → the rest of the site is a bit suspect for my left leaning self, but this article mirrors my observations elsewhere #
map of social networks → yes, another one. #
what families eat, around the world → the pictures are a tad “You Are What You Eat”, but it’s interesting to see the variations #
want to dodge the smoking ban? become an embassy → of an uninhabited island. Yeah. That’ll work. #
Food photography aggregator → Truly one of the most brilliant places I’ve visited recently. Do not go there if hungry. You have been warned. #
customer feedback for a store which deals in sex and bondage toys → I love the velvet handcuffs. Now, about that malfunctioning key? #
“clearly, to save a woman you need a man. It’s a question of muscles” → Italy’s first? all-woman beach opens for business. Italian wumminz also ask for moar eunuchs. These Romans are crazy. #
myspace vs facebook: it’s about class, apparently → correlation is not causation and all that sort of thing #
Vimperator: Firefox with Vi key bindings → make it stop. Dear gawd, make it :wq! #
continuous partial attention → some call this multitasking, but it’s not quite that #
facebook in 40 years → face what? #
don’t say this to us. apparently → worth a snigger. Probably going to get me a “fine. read those silly articles” too. #
an earth without people → been done in a pictorial form before, but this is specifically about Manhattan’s problems #
pay us more for our wine or merlot will flow → cabernet and pinot too #
who participates and what people are doing online → I’ve dissed Forrester Research findings before, but this is useful looking information #
yet more geography factoids from my childhood which are now proven wrong → Amazon pwns Nile. Who’s yer river daddy now, eh? #
annual per capita consumption of alcohol, by country → Luxembourg? 15.5 liters per annum? pfft. amateurs #
a measure of economic time → in keeping with my recent econ topics week #
one of the most startling pro-immigration arguments I’ve seen → and unsurprisingly, anti-protectionist #

still no sunshine

June 15th, 2007

So, a couple of days ago – I decided that I would try out the day without Google. Well, the challenge was specifically a day without the 5 major search engines, but in my case – that means el Goog.

I don’t have any toolbars or home page settings to Google, in fact – I only use Google in one very simple, specific way. I have a Smart Bookmark which allows me to type something like this …

google alternate search engines

on my Firefox address bar – yielding the Google SERP for alternative search engines.

Clearly, I knew that muscle memory would win out if I left the smart bookmark unchanged, so at the start of the day – I edited the Google bookmark to search Clusty instead. To make the test complete; I also disabled my smartmark searches for Google Images, Google News and Google Groups. I also wired in additional smartmarks for Alltheweb and Hakia. I would have also loved to use Powerset, but alas – they don’t have a public search offering just yet.

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